CHAPTER XXX

It was twenty minutes past seven when I paid my gondolier his fare at the railway station. I bought a first-class ticket to Milan and hurried down the long platform. Already the guards were calling to the passengers to take their places, and were closing the doors of the carriages.

Jacqueline herself I did not see, but her maid sat at the open window of a compartment reserved for women. Fortunately, it was a corridor train.

Before taking the casket to Jacqueline I cast one long look back at Venice. Never had her fairy architecture looked more entrancing, more ethereal. She was more mystical in this golden light than Arthur’s City of Avalon. But this enchantress of the seas had proved but a siren after all. For me her beauty had crumbled to ashes. Like my dreams, she had proved bitterly disappointing; for these dreams had been as intangible and difficult to realize as her charm.

I was turning my face away from the city of dead hopes and vanished dreams confidently to 301a workaday world; and if I could melt Jacqueline’s pride, and win her forgiveness, I might yet look forward to love and happiness.

I walked slowly down the corridor to her compartment. I stood quietly at the door a moment. She turned from the open window where she had been standing. There were tears in her eyes.

“Do you not think that you have caused me enough pain and embarrassment without troubling me further just now?”

“Jacqueline, you asked me to bring you the casket. You promised that you would listen to me when I brought it. There it is. It has cost me something, that casket–your love and your respect. In doing precisely what you asked me, I have lost all that is dearest to me in the world. But there it is. It is really the casket of da Sestos.”

I placed it on the seat beside her.

“All this is painfully theatrical, Mr. Hume,” she said disdainfully. “I can have no possible use for it. Will you please take it again? I wish to heaven that I had never heard of it.”

“Can you really be in earnest, Jacqueline?” I asked sadly. “Are you determined to be unjust? Are you quite resolved not to listen to me?”

“I am quite resolved,” she answered scornfully, 302“to be just to myself. And now will you please go?”

“I must go if you insist,” I said gravely, and I stooped to pick up the casket.

Then I saw that I was indeed the fool St. Hilary had so often called me. For her dear eyes belied her cruel words. They were full of doubt and despair. They beseeched me to be strong, to be ruthless, to break down her outraged pride. She longed to understand, to forgive me, but I must make her understand.

I sat beside her; I held both her hands firmly in mine.

“Jacqueline, it is impossible for me to go like this. My happiness, yes, and your happiness as well, is at stake. You must listen to me. It is my right. I refuse to go until I have told you the story of this casket. But I want you to listen to that story without prejudice. When I have told you everything, I hope you will see that I have tried to do just what you wished me to do. I am trying to be, now, just what you wished me to be. Though I hurt you by staying, yet I shall stay; for you told me that the man you loved must have something of the relentless about him. I shall remain relentless until I have gained my happiness and yours.”

“If it were possible for me to dispute the 303evidence of my own eyes, how gladly I would listen and exonerate you!”

“Then listen, Jacqueline.”

I told her of my search for the casket. I let the story plead for itself. When I had finished, she sat very still, her face shaded from the dim lamp in the center of the carriage by the partition of the seat.

“It was a foolish thing to ask,” she said, her eyes shining. “But oh, Dick, I am glad I did ask it. I know now that you are really strong and patient. You would dare much for the woman you love. Forgive me that I did not trust you. I wanted to, but last night it seemed––”

She leaned toward me, and I caught her in my arms.

Without, the moonlight fell on the mulberry trees, rows and rows of them, their branches festooned fantastically from tree to tree. They looked like figures stiffly dancing to an old-time minuet.

The End